Finding works of specific lengths?

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FinnHandyside
Posts: 37
Joined: May 10th, 2018, 6:31 pm
Location: Bryan-College Station, TX

Post by FinnHandyside »

Hi Everyone,
I know there’s plenty to read here, but what if you’re looking for something of a particular length? The last reading I did had a finished time of about 44 minutes. Piece of cake for some, too much to handle easily for others (like me!). Would anyone be able to point me in the direction of short short works... 5-20 minutes long? I’ve been having trouble finding something besides poetry to read that’s under 10,000 words.
Any suggestions how to find such a thing? News articles, journals, micro stories?
:help:
TriciaG
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Post by TriciaG »

You've got 3 options, to my mind:

(1) The Short Works forum, here: viewforum.php?f=19 has a lot of group projects with shorter sections. Yes, many are poetry, but many are not. :)

(2) In the Short Works forum are various collections - Children's Short Works, Ghost & Horror, Nonfiction, etc. These are projects where the reader finds their own texts to add to the collection, rather than having a source text assigned. This would require some hunting around for public domain materials to record. (This might be the place where you say you're having trouble finding material.)

(3) Many/most of the group projects have a word count in the sections. Depending on your individual reading speed, the type of text, etc., as a rule-of-thumb, you can estimate that people read at about 150 words per minute. So if a section says it's 1500 words, it'll be about 10 minutes of recording. So you can jump into any group project and claim a chapter/section, choosing which to claim based on its word count.
Serial novel: The Wandering Jew
Medieval England meets Civil War Americans: Centuries Apart
Humor: My Lady Nicotine
FinnHandyside
Posts: 37
Joined: May 10th, 2018, 6:31 pm
Location: Bryan-College Station, TX

Post by FinnHandyside »

Hi Tricia,
Yes, option 2 is definitely where I’d like to become more search savvy!
I suppose my problem might be knowing where to “hunt around” , what to hunt for, the best methods of hunting around for the thing I’m hunting for. :)
There is sooooo much stuff on Gutenberg and soooo much stuff on Internet Archive!
I’m just afraid I could spend weeks hunting around the wrong way, in the wrong place.
In the meantime, I’ll continue hanging around the Short Works forum!
Thanks!
TriciaG
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Joined: June 15th, 2008, 10:30 pm
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Post by TriciaG »

What I do, if it's regular text (not a photo of the text), is use a "bookmarklet" to find the word count.

Make a new bookmark. (I have it in my bookmark toolbar at the top of the screen, so it's always visible.) Call it "Word Count" or something like that. Then, in the "location" or URL field, put in this:

Code: Select all

javascript:d=window.getSelection()+'';%20d=(d.length==0)?document.title:d;%20alert(d.split('%20').length+'%20words,%20'+d.length+'%20characters');
If you have javascript enabled, you can highlight the text you're looking at and use that bookmark, and it will display how many words are in the selection.

That might help. :)
Serial novel: The Wandering Jew
Medieval England meets Civil War Americans: Centuries Apart
Humor: My Lady Nicotine
knotyouraveragejo
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Joined: November 18th, 2006, 4:37 pm

Post by knotyouraveragejo »

Finn,

A lot of good short articles can be found in old magazines. What sort of subjects interest you? Knowing that might help people offer specific suggestions. :)
Jo
FinnHandyside
Posts: 37
Joined: May 10th, 2018, 6:31 pm
Location: Bryan-College Station, TX

Post by FinnHandyside »

TriciaG wrote: July 16th, 2018, 4:53 pm What I do, if it's regular text (not a photo of the text), is use a "bookmarklet" to find the word count.
That’s quite a tip! Something I would never ever had known to do. Thank you!
FinnHandyside
Posts: 37
Joined: May 10th, 2018, 6:31 pm
Location: Bryan-College Station, TX

Post by FinnHandyside »

knotyouraveragejo wrote: July 16th, 2018, 5:27 pm A lot of good short articles can be found in old magazines. What sort of subjects interest you?
Magazine articles! Perfect! What am I interested in... I like nature, history... and current events that happened a long time ago... you know, like history! :)
I like humor, art, biographies.
Civilization.
I would really like to read some things that might sound like “narration” you’d hear in a documentary (so I can practice narration).
Where can I find old magazines?
knotyouraveragejo
LibriVox Admin Team
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Joined: November 18th, 2006, 4:37 pm

Post by knotyouraveragejo »

Google books, Hathitrust and internet archive are all good sources. There are also magazines on project Gutenberg. There are lots to choose from once you start looking for them. :)

For example:
Issues of Nature from 1869 through 1921: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012508495

Look for things like popular science or general interest magazines which tend to have shorter articles. Old newspapers are also a good source of short articles of historical interest.
Jo
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